Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been leveling up a Mesmer and have some questions about “Shatter” abilities.
I originally thought that Shatters were entirely reliant on illusions, but after some quick testing I realized that I can actually Shatter with 0 illusions and still produce a minimum effect around my character

1) Are Shatters actually mainly based off your characters location? For example if I shatter with 3 illusions, is most of the damage based on an AoE around my characters location when I cast it?

2) My illusions run towards their targets and explode when I shatter. If I have 3 illusions and use Mind Wrack, will each of the illusions do extra damage? — or is that extra damage actually only applied to my own personal Shatter?

3) For spells other than Mind Wrack — for example Distortion — do I instantly get 3-4 seconds of Distortion (with 3 illusions) or does the distortion effect only apply once the illusions hit the target.

I originally thought it was simple, but now I think I completely misunderstood the entire mechanic of Shattering.

1. Shatters are based off of the location of the entity that actually explodes. For you, it’s pbaoe. For your illusions, it’s where they explode, which is why they’ll run to their targets when you shatter them.
2. Mind wrack does non-linear scaling damage. Basically, a mind wrack with just 1 illusion will do roughly half the damage of a mind wrack with all 3 illusions. The more illusions you shatter with, the less each one does, but the higher the total damage will be.
3. All 3 shatters other than distortion are offensive attacks, which means the illusions need to hit their target. Distortion is different, and will cause all your illusions to just pop where they are.

Thanks man, that pretty much answers all my questions.

One last question though, if you have the answer:

For Diversion (the daze shatter) — do the clones daze individually on explosion? Like you could technically back-to-back daze someone 4x times in an ideal scenario?

Yep, staggering illusion placement for a chain repeat of individual dazes is something that is very possible, albeit tough to pull off. Similarly, it’ll strip a stack of stability/defiance per clone that hits.

Ok so how does that work? shatter involves all current clones. Do you mean single clone shatters?

Even though activating a shatter causes all of your illusions to shatter, each illusion shatters individually. To do what Fay described, you’d have illusions standing at varying ranges, then activate Diversion. Each illusion runs in and shatters, and each one that shatters applies one second of Daze individually.

To put it another way: shattering with three illusions gives you three separate shatter bombs that all go off on their own, rather than combining into one big shatter bomb.